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Mother Gives Birth to Two Identical Sets of Twins

A Texas mother beat the odds this Valentine’s Day by giving birth to two sets of identical twin boys, reports TODAY.

The babies were conceived without any fertility drugs and were delivered at 31 weeks by C-section. According to The Woman's Hospital of Texas, where the mother gave birth, the chances of naturally conceiving two sets of identical twins is one in 70 million. “The incidence of spontaneous quadruplets is somewhere of the order of 1 in 500,000,” Dr. Brian Kirshon, a specialist in maternal and fetal medicine at Houston Perinatal Associates and the Montalvo’s doctor, told TODAY. “And then if you take two sets of identical twins in the quadruplet set, the incidence must be one in many, many millions. It’s an extremely rare occurrence.”

Tressa and Manuel Montalvo Jr. of Houston had only been trying for one baby brother or sister to keep their 2-year-old son Memphis company. When Tressa was 10 weeks pregnant, the couple was told that they would be having twins. But they were in for an even bigger surprise when they learned at Tressa’s 12-week checkup that they would be having four babies, not two. “If I wasn’t already on the table lying down, I’m pretty sure I would have hit the floor,” Tressa, 36, told TODAY. Manuel was thrilled: “The first thing I said was ‘Home run!’ and then I started jumping up and down.”

Manuel has said that he’d like to keep trying for a baby girl even with a family of five boys, but Tressa isn’t ready to agree to anything just yet. “My husband was quick to answer for us in interviews,” she told TODAY. “For myself, I thought, ‘OK, can we get through this first before I answer that?’”